


Descent

by strei



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Angst, Blasphemy, Comfort, Corruption, Healing, Other, Romance, Trauma and recovery, gentle love to soothe old wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:35:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26124343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strei/pseuds/strei
Summary: Simeon asks his brothers if the love a human was worth condemnation.
Relationships: Asmodeus (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/ Reader, Beelzebub (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/ Reader, Belphegor (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/ Reader, Leviathan (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/ Reader, Lucifer (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/ Reader, Mammon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/ Reader, Simeon (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Reader, Wrath (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/ Reader
Comments: 9
Kudos: 155





	Descent

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys, I wrote this in one go during a manic writing period. I am not terribly familiar with the biblical canon, and all of this material is based on the game.

He could not and would not say that he didn't understand love. 

He could not and would not say that he didn't love. 

He loved his elder siblings and their white wings. Loved their words and the confidence they filled him with. He knew where he stood when he walked beside them. Knew what paths to tread and which to leave alone. With them, he knew his place and knew he walked with giants. The world between their wing tips was safe and steady.

He loved his younger siblings and their eager smiles. Their hopeful chatter filled him with joy. When he guided them, he could see all of the bright future of heaven laid before him. He lead the way for the young ones, showing them that their wings, though small now, would one day take them to the highest of possibilities. 

He loved his brothers who had been cast out of paradise. Who had fallen like bombs, like porcelain, like castaway stars plummeting from the heavens. He had loved them before their descent and he loved them now. Their halos had been twisted and their wings mangled during the plunge. During the crash of their bodies upon the earth as their blessings had leaked from their wounds like ichor. He loved them still. He had loved them to tears, but not enough to damnation. 

He could not and would not say he loved you. He did not dare to admit the words aloud for fear of retribution beyond anything you could endure. The last pairing of your kind had ended in destruction. In agony. In six condemned souls and a hellfire that blazed so brightly that even now the heavens would not look directly upon it. 

He could not and would not say he did not love you. He loved all men and women and children. It was in the nature of angels to love. But he did not love equally. He loved you as he had never before loved a mortal. He loved you to the point of blasphemy. 

It had not been his intention. He had never dreamed of this. Had never feared the possibility of this. In his nightmares, he had envisioned himself swathed in hellfire. Had envisioned his angelic siblings twisted into tortured shapes. He hadn't known to fear loving you until it was too late and you walked with him in his dreams. But now you haunted him. 

You with your dancing feet and out of tune voice. You with you silken skin and tender smiles. You were kind in ways the angels could not comprehend. You were beautiful in ways that heaven could not compare. You loved him in ways that could only lead to desecration, and though he knew of temptation, he had never before known the sweet contamination of such a virulent desire to reciprocate. 

You made a liar out of him. You made a martyr of him. You brought him to his knees, a venerable worshipper of your touch and your words. 

For the first time in his life, he contemplated what it would be like to...be cast out. 

He asked Pride if the fall had hurt. Pride had looked on him with wide, surprised eyes before replying to his carefully moderated question. The fall had destroyed him. The fall had broken him. The fall had turned him into a writhing agony of a man. But the fall had not hurt. He had risen from the ashes every bit as strong and of his vice as he had been. The fall, for all it had burned and boiled and ripped and sheared, had not hurt. He had not known the pain of humility until his eyes had lain upon yours and he realized that he was nothing in the gentle starlight of your smile. Had not known the agony of bending at the knee until you had come into his life and asked him if you could hold him. You had humbled him with your love and he knew of no greater pain than that of holding you away. 

He asked Greed what the cost had been. If it had been worth what he now held at night. There had been a flush of his tawny cheeks and a shy scratch along the back of his neck, but there had been no hesitation in Greed's response. What were money or metals or jewels worth in comparison to you? Nothing. Nothing at all. He would give up marble palaces and gates of gold a hundred times over for a glimpse of your smile. Would live a beggar in search of coin and dutifully place each one upon the altar of your hands brushing through his hair. What were the riches of heaven to his mortal's love? Dust and ash. What could heaven offer him that he could not readily find in your arms?

He asked Envy if love was enough to dull the ache of being cast from paradise in a falling inferno. Unlike Greed and Pride, Envy had confided that the descent had driven him mad. Mad with longing. Mad with anger. Mad with a desire for that which he did not have. The fall had revealed to him all the ways he was not enough. Heaven had told him he was whole and the earth had revealed him to be lacking. But he was no empty shell. Not any more. He no longer ached to spite others for the way they shone unlike him. You had taken his hand and filled that hollow part of him. That jagged edge that had made him unsightly in his own eyes. You had pressed your fingers into the empty spaces between his and whispered that he had never been broken or ugly. He had never been lacking or less than enough. He had been a puzzle piece waiting for you to hold him. Had been half of something so perfect that it brought hell to its knees and tears to his eyes.

He asked Lust if the admiration of demondom was enough to satiate the ache in his chest. If the close press of bodies, the desperate bid for satiation, was worth losing the adoration of angels. Lust had bent in half with laughter, tears streaming from his ruby eyes. He'd exclaimed with glee that, of all his brothers, his sin was the most enjoyable. The most easily quieted. He told him that he did so adore the press of body to body and the chorus of pleasure it ensued. But then his voice fell soft and quiet, filling with a childlike sense of awe. He admitted, like a lover at confession, that his punishment hadn't been the temptation of sexual desire. No, it had been the insecurity. The knowledge that the affections he wrought would not last past the night, the day, the week he spent beside his paramour. That people would not see past the facade of silken hair and fluttering lashes and still desire him. But you had cradled him to your chest and shushed the despondent ghosts that clung to him. You had adored him and you had ravished him wholly. Had accepted his vices and shame and come out the other side with your arms wide open and his name on your lips. Angels and demons could not love, not truly, Lust had whispered. The angels and demons could only love in halves, but his lover adored him in his entirety.

Wrath had not waited for him to ask. You had held him. Had cradled him until his patience had ebbed away. Until he was a seething creature of destruction- and then you had held him more gently. Like he was made of glass. You sat with him until the facade melted away and the face behind the anger that had birthed him was grief. A grief with no outlet and nowhere to live. A grief that had once been a love so strong it had sent angels falling from the sky. You had let him nestle it inside of your chest, where your heart beat in companionship to his own. 

He asked Gluttony if there had been any balm to the emptiness that ate at him even as he tried to fill it with food. If the loss of his sisters and brothers in paradise, as well as Lilith, was a void that could even be satiated. Gluttony had shaken his head. No, he said, honesty ringing in his every word. No amount of food could fill the ache left by love lost. But there was healing. There was your head on his shoulder and his arms around you. There was contentment and peace in your lips on his forehead and eyelids. There was recovery. Gluttony assured him that there would not always be an abyss of loneliness, waiting to be filled with food or lust or sleep. Not when you said his name so sweetly and cradled him so dearly to your heart that your love filled in every crevice of his broken one. 

He asked Sloth if life below the earth, among sulfur and brimstone, was a life worth living. He was scoffed at as Sloth took seat before him. He told him that he would never know loss and guilt the way he knew them. That he would never swim the depths of self hatred and self disgust that Sloth had waded through. But there was light in those depths. Still. There was life. There was forgiveness. There was a hand reaching out to him in the dark and he had been brave enough and desperate enough to take it and not let go and no, not every day was good. Not every day was perfect. There was still guilt and self-pity. But with his hand in yours life was not just worth living, it was worth looking forward to, however tentatively. 

And so he asked you, if he fell, would you catch him? Would you love him broken and twisted? Would you still look upon him as some celestial spirit, as some beloved guardian?

Simeon fell to his knees before you, entreating you to love him despite his failings. Despite his shortcomings and faults. To love him in the way only humans could. In the way only those who walked the earth knowing that any moment could be their last but still pouring all of their hearts into one another could. In the way humans planted trees in gardens they would never see come to fruition. 

He wanted you to love him completely. 

And he wanted to love you the same

You smiled at him. Like a sun ray through clouds. Like a breath he hadn't even known he'd been holding. You smiled at him and took him into your arms. You promised you'd catch him. You'd smiled and swore that he'd never feel when he hit the ground. That he would never know the painful twisting of feathers into scale. He would only know your kiss along his back as his flesh warped. He felt hand upon hand upon hand on his shoulders as his fallen brothers drew close and promised the same. He would not fall alone. They would fall for him. 

Again

And Simeon knew he was loved. He was loved beyond words and beyond action. He was loved to the point of blasphemy. 

Amongst angels, the first sin was love. Pride, Greed, Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth had loved Lilith. They had loved each other, even as they had been cast from the sky. Even as they awoke in twisted, broken forms. They loved each other and they loved you and the extended their hands to him, promising they would love him too. He loved you and you loved him and maybe that made sinners of you all, but what could heaven offer his soul that was worth more than the sin of your hands in his?

What was god in comparison to the love of his darling?

Nothing at all.


End file.
